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Gaheris
since your mother cast her spell every kiss has left a bruise Gaheris was born and brought up in Orkney, an average sort of boy in a family of intense, charismatic, gifted, frequently angry people. His two eldest brothers were a unit, so were his younger brother and sister, and Gaheris spent a good deal of his childhood either alone or wishing he was. Eventually he left home for his uncle's court at Camelot, where at least it was easier to escape notice. He managed to get himself knighted, largely out of a combination of nepotism and dumb luck; when his brother Gareth rescued himself a bride, Gaheris married her younger and infinitely crabbier sister, Lynet, which was the best thing that ever happened to him. He loved Lynet very deeply, and was actually doing all right, up to the point where he decided he was capable of visiting his mother again. He found her in bed with a young man named Lamorak, and killed her on the spot. Lamorak, fleeing the scene, was murdered by Gaheris' brothers in retribution before they figured out that he hadn't actually done anything. The upshot of this clusterfuck was that King Arthur banished Gaheris for the traditional year and a day. While in exile his wife had a daughter, and when he was around them he gave a convincing impression of being an ordinary, normal husband and father -- until you got him alone, or tried to have a more than superficial conversation with him, at which point you were probably going to notice that there was a point behind his eyes that was always moving, like something trapped back there and terrified, and the way he seemed kind of detached from you. He lived like this right up until he volunteered, or was volunteered, to stand guard over the condemned Guinevere. He went unarmed, and Lancelot killed him in the process of rescuing her. ...except, for some reason, it didn't take. you've been reading too much meaning from existence In the centuries following, Gaheris drifted around considerably: he wandered from Britain into mainland Europe, from there into Asia for a while, and eventually ended up in North America, most recently in New York City. In this day and age, he gets by as an artist, the only thing he's ever had a real talent for; and with over a thousand years to practise, give or take a decade, he's gotten considerably better than average. He draws pictures of his past, and sells them for less money than he'd like, and lives in something tolerably like a garret crossed with a cardboard box when he's not living on the streets. He copes with the world in general by telling himself that it will probably go away eventually. you're an angel, you're a demon, you're just human His most notable trait is his habit of not dying. He's tried to kill himself innumerable times, out of despair or ennui or the occasional bout of psychosis, and more recently out of morbid curiosity; he's never made it stick. Injuries regenerate more or less slowly depending on their severity, and more comprehensive methods just dump him back out in the land of the living, unscathed except for the mother of all hangovers. (At the moment he is missing three fingers, his right pinky and his left middle and index, and his right ring finger is truncated at the second joint. These things happen when you don't take care of your frostbite.) Other than that he's shy, nervous, with a tendency to worry and very weird issues with boundaries. When he's relaxed, which isn't very often, he can joke and even snark, but you are not that likely to see this happening. Otherwise he tends to avoid people whenever possible. He has nightmares constantly, and has never really come to grips with the fact that he killed his mother. It's also fairly important to note that Gaheris has refused to adjust to the twenty-first century. He has a very, very basic understanding of the world he currently lives in, to the point where his last hospital stay was characterised by complete and utter terror on his part because he had no idea what was going on, and spent a lot of time ripping out his IVs because he didn't know what they were for. When you first meet him, you don't really notice this, but if you spend a whole lot of time around him, or try to introduce him to a toaster, you'll notice he's not totally up on what's going on. now your world has turned to trash, broken windows on the past * BLOOD MAKES NOISE ⊕ SUZANNE VEGA » I'm standing in a windy tunnel shouting through the roar, and I'd like to give the information you're looking for, but blood makes noise, it's a ringing in my ears, and I can't really hear you in the thickening of fear * THE OCEAN ⊕ DAR WILLIAMS » and the ones that can know you so well are the ones that can swallow you whole. I have a good and I have an evil, I thought the ocean, the ocean thought nothing * etc. take that child and teach him senseless the magic is broken * Kit MacDougal * Tara Maclay the house is in ruins * Mordred * Christie MacDougal we feel nothing at all Gaheris belongs to English folklore, and in this particular iteration to Soujin. Ben Chaplin belongs to Ben Chaplin. Headings are from "Lullaby", by James. Category:Characters Category:Living